Day	Amount	Place	Category
Tuesday	$29.00	Olive Garden	Allowance
Thursday	$21.00	Safeway	Groceries
Friday	$21.50	Safeway	Groceries
	$265.50	CostCo	Groceries
	$58.00	Gas	Car
	$0.66	Parking	Car

Less than $400 in spending this week. I’m not really sure how that happened. Probably because we’ve spent the whole weekend going to graduation parties and not shopping.

I did take books to Half Price Books on Monday and got another $40 in cash. C & J took all sorts of old stereo and computer equipment to e-waste recycling on Saturday, getting even more crud out of my house. We are making progress. It’s none of the big ticket items anymore, so it seems slower, but we are getting there.

Our Friday CostCo spending isn’t really all groceries. We bought a new $200 camera, as our old camera (that we bought in England in 2008) finally died on us.

 

The only other exciting thing is that I’ve changed the look of this blog and of Life by Pets. I think I actually like the Life by Pets look better, but I’m still using free wordpress themes, and the one I’m using for this is one of the few that has a custom header picture formatted correctly for my new custom art (drawn by one very talented 12 year old).

 

 

I have six goals for 2012. As part of the Sunday evening posts, I am tracking those goals, kind of like I do for spending, in order to hold myself accountable.

1)      Be paid for publishing one piece of fiction

Submissions so far: 2

Responses: 1 rejection 1 acceptance

The anthology I had a piece accepted to is now available to buy on Amazon. It’s called Conquest Through Determination.

2)      Make money publishing my next art/fiction book

This is on hold for now. However, I did have a chance to talk with the artist I want to work with on Friday, and her life has settled down, so there’s a good chance we can start work on this sometime in June. (When my life settles down a bit.)

3)      Attend FinCon12. Pay for the trip with money from allowance/side projects saved/earned BEFORE the conference starts. Goal: $600

I’m in the negatives allowance wise.

Plane ticket prices have gone up, so right now, with credit card points, it would cost about $30 out of pocket for me to buy my ticket to FinCon. However, we’re still putting quite a bit on the card each month, and I don’t expect prices will go up much from where they are, and might even go back down again. (Sweet spot for prices out of Seattle tends to be around 4-6 weeks before the flight.) So for now, I’m still holding off on booking the plane ticket.

4)      Become a member of Yakezie (6 month anniversary is Jan 21)

I plan to be a member of Epsilon class when the application goes up in August. I do need to make sure I’m still connecting with new challengers, though, because a lot of the challengers on my list this last time will be Yakezie Delta class members.

In order to develop relationships with new challengers, I have decided that each edition of What I’m Reading on Saturdays will now include a new challenger.

5)      Make money from my blogs.

AdSense earnings: $22.01 (They won’t send me any money until I hit $100.) Views on this blog (and all my blogs) have been going down lately, and I know that’s because I haven’t been as active on twitter or commenting in the last few months. As I pick up my activity I expect activity here will pick up and my AdSense income will pick up, at least a few cents or so.

6)      Be healthier

This has been a really good week. I walked at work on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. On Thursday I walked twice, and that’s actually my new goal, as it only takes me about 10 minutes to walk around the parking lot. I can do that on each of my breaks and still have lunch for whatever I want.

We also went to the dog park on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

I mowed the lawn on both Saturday and Sunday.

I ate no meat on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday.

So overall, a good week for activity and for healthy eating (well, if we don’t count the multiple deserts eaten Saturday and today at the graduation parties).